Madcap
127
pages
English
Documents
2010
Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe Tout savoir sur nos offres
127
pages
English
Documents
2010
Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe Tout savoir sur nos offres
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Madcap, by George Gibbs
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: Madcap
Author: George Gibbs
Release Date: March 15, 2004 [eBook #11584]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADCAP***
This eBook was produced by Carolyn Derkatch.
MADCAP
by George Gibbs
[Illustration: "'You must flirt, Mr. Markham-and make pretty speeches-'"]
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Hermia II. The Gorilla III. The Ineffectual Aunt IV. Marooned V. Bread and Salt VI. The Rescue VII. "Wake Robin" VIII. Olga Tcherny IX. Out of
His Depth X. The Fugitive XI. The Gates of Chance XII. The Fairy Godmother XIII. Vagabondia XIV. The Fabiani Family XV. Danger XVI. Manet Cicatrix
XVII. PÂre GuÂgou's Roses XVIII. A Philosopher in a Quandary XIX. Mountebanks XX. The Empty House XXI. Nemasis XXII. Great Pan is Dead XXIII. A
Lady in the Dark XXIV. The Wings of the Butterfly XXV. Circe and the Fossil XXVI. Mrs. Berkeley Hammond Entertains XXVII. The Seats of the Mighty
XXVIII. The Brass Bell XXIX. Duo
CHAPTER I
HERMIA
Titine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the
look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the
dawn. She ...
Voir
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: Madcap
Author: George Gibbs
Release Date: March 15, 2004 [eBook #11584]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADCAP***
This eBook was produced by Carolyn Derkatch.
MADCAP
by George Gibbs
[Illustration: "'You must flirt, Mr. Markham-and make pretty speeches-'"]
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Hermia II. The Gorilla III. The Ineffectual Aunt IV. Marooned V. Bread and Salt VI. The Rescue VII. "Wake Robin" VIII. Olga Tcherny IX. Out of
His Depth X. The Fugitive XI. The Gates of Chance XII. The Fairy Godmother XIII. Vagabondia XIV. The Fabiani Family XV. Danger XVI. Manet Cicatrix
XVII. PÂre GuÂgou's Roses XVIII. A Philosopher in a Quandary XIX. Mountebanks XX. The Empty House XXI. Nemasis XXII. Great Pan is Dead XXIII. A
Lady in the Dark XXIV. The Wings of the Butterfly XXV. Circe and the Fossil XXVI. Mrs. Berkeley Hammond Entertains XXVII. The Seats of the Mighty
XXVIII. The Brass Bell XXIX. Duo
CHAPTER I
HERMIA
Titine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the
look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the
dawn. She ...
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Madcap, by George Gibbs
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Madcap
Author: George Gibbs
Release Date: March 15, 2004 [eBook #11584]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADCAP***
This eBook was produced by Carolyn Derkatch.
MADCAP
by George Gibbs
[Illustration: "'You must flirt, Mr. Markham-and make pretty speeches-'"]
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Hermia II. The Gorilla III. The Ineffectual Aunt IV. Marooned V. Bread and Salt VI. The Rescue VII. "Wake Robin" VIII. Olga Tcherny IX. Out of His Depth X. The Fugitive XI. The Gates of Chance XII. The Fairy Godmother XIII. Vagabondia XIV. The Fabiani Family XV. Danger XVI. Manet Cicatrix XVII. PÂre GuÂgou's Roses XVIII. A Philosopher in a Quandary XIX. Mountebanks XX. The Empty House XXI. Nemasis XXII. Great Pan is Dead XXIII. A Lady in the Dark XXIV. The Wings of the Butterfly XXV. Circe and the Fossil XXVI. Mrs. Berkeley Hammond Entertains XXVII. The Seats of the Mighty XXVIII. The Brass Bell XXIX. Duo
CHAPTER I
HERMIA
Titine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the dawn. She peered out of the window and contracted her shoulders expressively. To ride in the cold morning air upon a violent horse when she had been out late! B—r! But then, Mademoiselle was a wonderful person—like no one since the beginning of the world. She made her own laws and Titine was reluctantly obliged to confess that she herself was delighted to obey them.
Another slight shrug of incomprehension—of absolution from such practices—and Titine moved to the linen cabinet and took out some fluffy things of lace and ribbon, then to a closet from which she brought a soft room-gown, a pair of silk stockings and some very small suede slippers.
She had hardly completed these preparations when there was the sound of a door hurriedly closed downstairs, a series of joyous yelps from a dog, a rush of feet on the stairs and the door of the room gave way before the precipitate entrance of a slight, almost boyish, female person, with blue eyes, the rosiest of cheeks and a mass of yellow hair, most of which had burst from its confines beneath her hat.
To the quiet Titine her mistress created an impression of bringing not only herself into the room, but also the violent horse and the whole of the out-of-doors besides.
"Down, Domino! Down, I say!" to the clamorous puppy. "Now—out with you!" And as he refused to obey she waved her crop threateningly and at a propitious moment banged the door upon his impertinent snub-nose.
"Quick, Titine, my bath and—why, what are you looking at?"
"Your hat, Mademoiselle," in alarm, "It is broken, and your face—"
"It's a perfectly good face. What's the matter with it?"
By this time Miss Challoner had reached the cheval glass. Her hat was smashed in at one side and several dark stains disfigured her cheek and temple.
"Oh, I'm asight. He chucked me into some bushes, Titine—"
"That terrible horse—Mademoiselle!"
"The same—into some very sticky bushes—but he didn't get away. I got on without help, too. Lordy, but Ididtake it out of him! Oh, didn't I!"
Her eye lighted gaily as though in challenge at nothing at all as she removed her gloves and tossed her hat and crop on the bed and sprawled into a chair with a sigh, while Titine removed her boots and made tremulous and reproachful inquiries.
"Mademoiselle—will—will kill herself, I am sure."
Hermia Challoner laughed.
"Better die living—than be living dead. Besides, no one ever dies who doesn't care whether he dies or not. I shall die comfortably in bed at the age of eighty-three, I'm sure of it. Now, my bath.Vite, Titine! I have a hunger like that which never was before."
Miss Challoner undressed and entered her bathroom, where she splashed industriously for some minutes, emerging at last radiant and glowing with health and a delight in the mere joy of existence. While Titine brushed her hair, the girl sat before her dressing-table putting lotion on her injured cheeks and temple. Her hair arranged, she sent the maid for her breakfast tray while she finished her toilet in leisurely fashion and went into her morning room. The suede slippers contributed their three inches to her stature, the long lines of the flowing robe added their dignity, and the strands of her hair, each woven carefully into its appointed place, completed the transformation from the touseled, hoydenish boy-girl of half an hour before into the luxurious and somewhat bored young lady of fashion.
But she sank into the chair before her breakfast tray and ate with an appetite which took something form this illusion, while Titine brought her letters and a long box of flowers which were unwrapped and placed in a floor-vase of silver and glass in an embrasure of the window. The envelope which accompanied the flowers Titine handed to her mistress, who opened it carelessly between mouthfuls and finally added it to the accumulated litter of fashionable stationery. Hermia eyed her Dresden chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it. But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appetite even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon Titine, who brought her the cigarettes and a brazier, she created the impression—as she always did indoors—of a child, greatly overgrown, parading herself with mocking ostentation in the garments of maturity. The cigarette, too, was a part of this parade, and she smoked it daintily, though without apparent enjoyment.
Her meal finished, she was ready to receive feminine visitors. She seldom lacked company, for it is not the fate of a girl of Hermia Challoner's condition to be left long to her own devices. Her father's death, some years before, had fallen heavily upon her, but youth and health had borne her above even that sad event triumphant, and now at three and twenty, with a fortune which loomed large even in a day of large fortunes, she lived alone with a legion of servants in the great house, with no earthly ties but an ineffectual aunt and a Trust Company.
But she did not suffer for lack of advice as to the conduct of her life or of her affairs, and she always took it with the sad devotional air which its givers had learned meant that in the end she would do exactly as she chose. And so the Aunt and the Trust Company, like the scandalized Titine, ended inevitably in silent acquiescence.
Of her acquaintances much might be said, both good and bad. They represented almost every phase of society from the objects of her charities (which were many and often unreasoning) to the daughters of her father's friends who belonged in her own sphere of existence. And if one's character may be judged by that of one's friends, Hermia was of infinite variety. Perhaps the sportive were most often in her company, and it was against these that Mrs. Westfield ineffectually railed, but there was a warmth in her affection for Gertrude Brotherton, who liked quiet people as a rule (and made Hermia the exception to prove it), and an intellectual flavor in her attachment for Angela Reeves, who was interested in social problems, which more than compensated for Miss Challoner's intimacy with those of a gayer sort.
Her notes written, she dressed for the morning, then lay back in her chair with a sharp little sigh and pensively touched the scratches on her face, her expression falling suddenly into lines of discontent. It was a kind of reaction which frequently followed moments of intense activity and, realizing its significance, she yielded to it sulkily, her gaze on the face of the clock which was ticking off purposeless minutes with maddening precision. She glanced over her shoulder in relief as her maid appeared in the doorway.
"Will Mademoiselle see the Countess Tcherny and Mees Ashhurst?" Titine was a great believer in social distinctions.
"Olga! Yes, I was expecting her. Tell them to come right up."
The new arrivals entered the room gaily with the breezy assertiveness of persons who were assured of their welcome and very much at home. Hilda Ashhurst was tall, blonde, aquiline and noisy; the Countess, dainty, dark-eyed andsvelte, with the flexible voice which spoke of familiarity with many tongues and rebuked the nasal greeting of her more florid companion. Hermia met them with a sigh. Only yesterday Mrs. Westfield had protested again about Hermia's growing intimacy with the Countess, who had quite innocently taken unto herself all of the fashionable vices of polite Europe.
Hilda Ashhurst watched Hermia's expression a moment and then laughed.
"Been catching it—haven't you? Poor Hermia! It's dreadful to be the one chick in a family of ugly ducklings—"
"Or the ugly duckling in a family of virtuous chicks—"
"Not ugly,chÂrie," laughed the Countess. "One is never ugly with a million francs a year. Such a fortune would beautify a satyr. It even makes your own prettiness unimportant."
"It is unimportant—"
"Partly because you make it so. You don't care. You don't think about it,voil tout."
"Why should I think about it? I can't change it."
"Oh, yes, you can. Even a homely woman who is clever can make herself beautiful, a beautiful woman—Dieu! There is nothing in the world that a clever, beautiful woman cannot be."
"I'm not clever or—"
"I shall not flatter you,cara mia. You are—er—quite handsome enough. If you cared for the artistic you could go through a salonlike thePiper of Hamelinwith a queue of gentlemen reaching back into the corridors of infinity. Instead of which you wear mannish clothes, do your hair in a Bath-bun, and permit men the privilege of equality. Oh, la, la! A man is no longer useful when one ceases to mystify him."
She strolled to the window, sniffed at Trevvy Morehouse's roses, helped herself to a cigarette and sat down.
Hermia was not inartistic and she resented the imputation. It was only that her art and Olga's differed by the breadth of an ocean.
"For me, when a man becomes mystified he ceases to be useful," laughed Hermia.
"Pouf! my dear," said the Countess with a wave of her cigarette. "I simply do not believe you. A man is never so useful as when he moves in the dark. Women were born to mystify. Some of us do it one way—some in another. If you wear mannish clothes and a Bath-bun, it is because they become you extraordinarily well and because they form a disguise more complete and mystifying than anything else you could assume."
"A disguise!"
"Exactly. You wish to create the impression that you are indifferent to men—that men, by the same token, are indifferent to you." The Countess Olga smiled. "Your disguise is complete,mon enfant—except for one thing— your femininity— which refuses to be extinguished. You do not hate men. If you did you would not go to so much trouble to look like them. One day you will love very badly—very madly. And then—" the Countess paused and raised her eyebrows and her hands expressively. "You're like me. It's simple enough," she continued. "You have everything you want, including men who amuse but do not inspire. Obviously, you will only be satisfied with something you can't get, my dear."
"Horrors! What a bird of ill-omen you are. And I shall love in vain?"
The Countess snuffed out her cigarette daintily upon the ash tray.
"Can one love in vain? Perhaps.
/* _"'Aimer pour Âtre aimÂ, c'est de l'homme, Aimer pour aimer, c'est Presque de l'ange.'" */
"I'm afraid I'm not that kind of an angel."
Hilda Ashhurst laughed. "Olga is."
"Olga!" exclaimed Hermia with a glance of inquiry.
"Haven't you heard? She has thrown her young affections away upon that owl-like nondescript who has been doing her portrait."
"I can't believe it."
"It's true," said the Countess calmly. "I am quite mad about him. He has the mind of a philosopher, the soul of a child, the heart of a woman—"
"—the manners of a boor and the impudence of the devil," added Hilda spitefully.
Hermia laughed but the Countess Olga's narrowed eyes passed Hilda scornfully.
"Any one can have good manners. They're the hallmark of mediocrity. And as for impudence—that is the one sin a man may commit which a woman forgives."
"Ican't," said Hilda.
The Countess Olga's right shoulder moved toward her ear the fraction of an inch.
"He's hateful, Hermia," continued Hilda quickly, "a gorilla of a man, with a lowering brow, untidy hair, and a blue chin—"
"He is adorable," insisted Olga.
"How very interesting!" laughed Hermia. "An adorable philosopher, with the impudence of the devil, and the blue chin of a gorilla! When did you meet this logical—the zoological paradox?"
"Oh, in Paris. I knew him only slightly, but he moved in a set whose edges touched mine—the talented people of mine. He had already made his way. He has been back in America only a year. We met early in the winter quite by chance. You know the rest. He has painted my portrait—a really great portrait. You shall see."
"Oh, itwasthis morning we were going, wasn't it? I'll be ready in a moment, dear."
"But Hilda shall be left in the shopping district, finished Olga.
"By all means," said Miss Ashhurst scornfully.
CHAPTER II
THEGORILLA
Of all her friends Olga Teherny was the one who amused and entertained Hermia the most. She was older than Hermia, much more experienced and to tell the truth quite as mad in her own way as Hermia was. There were times when even Hermia could not entirely approve of her, but she forgave her much because she was herself and because, no matter what depended upon it, she could not be different if she tried. Olga Egerton had been born in Russia, where her father had been called as a consulting engineer of the railway department of the Russian Government. Though American born, the girl had been educated according to the European fashion and at twenty had married and lost the young nobleman whose name she bore, and had buried him in his family crypt in Moscow with the simple fortitude of one who is well out of a bad bargain. But she had paid her toll to disillusion and the age of thirty found her a little more careless, a little more worldly-wise than was necessary, even in a cosmopolitan. Her comments spared neither friend nor foe and Hilda Ashhurst, whose mind grasped only the obvious facts of existence, came in for more than a share of the lady's invective.
Indeed, Markam, the painter, seemed this morning to be the only luminous spot on the Countess Olga's social horizon and by the time the car had reached lower Fifth Avenue she had related most of the known facts of his character and career including his struggle for recognition in Europe, his revolutionary attitude toward the Art of the Academies as well as toward modern society, and the consequent and self-sought isolation which deprived him of the intercourse of his fellows and seriously retarded his progress toward a success that his professional talents undoubtedly merited.
Hermia listened with an abstracted air. Artists she remembered were a race of beings quite apart from the rest of humanity and with the exception of a few money-seeking foreigners, one of whom had painted her portrait, and Teddy Vincent, a New Yorker socially prominent (who was unspeakable), her acquaintance with the cult had been limited and unfavorable. When, therefore, her car drew alongside the curb of the old-fashioned building to which Olga directed the chauffeur, Hermia was already prepared to dislike Mr. Markham cordially. She had not always cared for Olga's friends.
There was no elevator in the building before which they stopped, and the two women mounted the stairs, avoiding both the wall and the dusty baluster, contact with either of which promised to defile their white gloves, reaching, somewhat out of breath, a door with a Florentine knocker bearing the name "Markham."
Olga knocked. There was no response. She knocked again while Hermia waited, a question on her lips. There was a sound of heavyfootsteps and the door was flungopen wide and a bigman with rumpled hair,a well-smearedpainting-
smock and wearing a huge pair of tortoise-shell goggles peered out into the dark hall-way, blurting out impatiently,
"I'm very busy. I don't need any models. Come another day—"
He was actually on the point of banging the door in their faces when the Countess interposed.
"Such hospitality!"
At the sound of her voice Markham paused, the huge palette and brushes suspended in the air.
"Oh," he murmured in some confusion. "It's you, Madame—"
"It is. Very cross and dusty after the climb up your filthy stairs—I suppose I ought to be used to this kind of welcome but I'm not, somehow. Besides, I'm bringing a visitor, and had hoped to find you in a pleasanter mood."
He showed his white teeth as he laughed.
"Oh, Lord! Pleasant!" And then as an afterthought, very frankly, "I don't suppose Iamvery pleasant!" He stood aside bowing as Hermia emerged from the shadows and Olga Tcherny presented him. It was a stiff bow, rather awkward and impatient and revealed quite plainly his disappointment at her presence, but Hermia followed Olga into the room with a slight inclination of her head, conscious that in the moment that his eyes passed over her they made a brief note which classified her among the unnecessary nuisances to which busy geniuses must be subjected.
Olga Tcherny, who had now taken full possession of the studio, fell into its easiest chair and looked up at the painter with her caressing smile.
"You've been working. You've got the fog of it on you. Are wede trop?"
"Er—no. It's in rather a mess here, that's all. Iwasworking, but I'm quite willing to stop."
"I'm afraid you've no further wish for me now that I'm no longer useful," she sighed. "You're not going to discard me so easily. Besides, we're not going to stay long—only a minute. I was hoping Miss Challoner could see the portrait."
He glanced at Hermia almost resentfully, and fidgeted with his brushes.
"Yes—of course. It's the least I can do—isn't it? The portrait isn't finished. It's dried in, too—but—"
He laid his palette slowly down and wiped his brushes carefully on a piece of cheese-cloth, put a canvas in a frame upon the easel and shoved it forward into a better light.
Hermia followed his movements curiously, sure that he was the most inhospitable human being upon whom two pretty women had ever condescended to call, and stood uncomfortably, realizing that he has not even offered her a chair. But when the portrait was turned toward the light, she forgot everything but the canvas before her.
It was not the Olga Tcherny that people knew best—the gay, satiricalmondaine, who exacted from a world which had denied her happiness her pound of flesh and called it pleasure. The Olga Tcherny which looked at Hermia from the canvas was the one that Hermia had glimpsed in the brief moments between bitterness and frivolity, a woman with a soul which in spite of her still dreamed of the things it had been denied.
It was a startling portrait, bold almost to the point of brutality, and even Hermia recognized its individuality, wondering at the capacity for analysis which had made the painter's delineation of character so remarkable, and his brush so unerring. She stole another—a more curious—glance at him. The hideous goggles and the rumpled hair could not disguise the strong lines of his face which she saw in profile—the heavy brows, the straight nose, the thin, rather sensitive lips and the strong, cleanly cut chin. Properly dressed and valeted this queer creature might have been made presentable. But his manners! No valeting or grooming could ever make such a man a gentleman.
If he was aware of her scrutiny he gave no sign of it and leaned forward intently, his gaze on the portrait—alone, to all appearances, with the fires of his genius. Hermia's eyes followed his, the superficial and rather frivolous comment which had been on her lips stilled for the moment by the dignity of his mental attitude, into which it seemed Olga Tcherny had also unconsciously fallen. But the silence irritated Hermia—the wrapt, absorbed attitudes of the man and the woman and the air of sacro-sanctity which pervaded the place. It was like a ceremonial in which this queer animal was being deified. She, at least, couldn't deify him.
"It's like you Olga, of course," she said flippantly, "but it's not at all pretty."
The words fell sharply and Markham and the Countess turned toward the Philistine who stood with her head cocked on one side, her arms a-kimbo. Markham's eyes peered forward somberly for a moment and he spoke with slow gravity.
"I don't paint 'pretty' portraits," he said.
"Mr. Markham means, Hermia, that he doesn't believe in artistic lies," said Olga smoothly.
"AndIcontend," Hermia went on undaunted, "that it's an artistic lie not to paint you as pretty as you are."
"Perhaps Mr. Markham doesn't think me as pretty as you do—"
Markham bowed his head as though to absolve himself from the guilt suggested.
"I try not to think in terms of prettiness," he explained slowly. "Had you been merely pretty I don't think I should have attempted—"
"But isn't the mission of Art to beautify—to adorn—?" broke in Hermia, mercilessly bromidic.
Markham turned and looked at her as though he had suddenly discovered the presence of an insect which needed extermination.
"My dear young lady, the mission of Art is to tell the truth," he growled. "When I find it impossible to do that, I shall take up another trade."
"Oh," said Hermia, enjoying herself immensely. "I didn't mean to discourage you."
"I don't really think that you have," put in Markham.
Olga Tcherny laughed from her chair in a bored amusement.
"Hermia, dear," she said dryly, "I hardly brought you here to deflect the orbit of genius. Poor Mr. Markham! I shudder to think of his disastrous career if it depended upon your approval."
Hermia opened her moth to speak, paused and then glanced at Markham. His thoughts were turned inward again and excluded her completely. Indeed it was difficult to believe that he remembered what she had been talking about. In addition to being unpardonably rude, he now simply ignored her. His manner enraged her. "Perhaps my opinion doesn't matter to Mr. Markham," she probed with icy distinctness. "Nevertheless, I represent the public which judges pictures and buys them. Which orders portraits and pays for them. It's my opinion that counts—my money upon which the fashionable portrait painter must depend for his success. He must please me or people like me and the way to please most easily is to paint me as I ought to be rather than as I am."
Markham slowly turned so that he faced her and eyed her with a puzzled expression as he caught the meaning of her remarks, more personal and arrogant than his brief acquaintance with her seemed in any way to warrant.
"I'm not a fashionable portrait painter, thank God." he said with some warmth. "Fortunately I'm not obliged to depend upon the whims or upon the money of the people whose judgment you consider so important to an artistic success. I have no interest in the people who compose fashionable society, not in their money nor their aims, ideals or the lack of them. I paint what interests me—and shall continue to do so."
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed toward Olga. "What's the use, Madame? In a moment I shall be telling Miss—er—"
"Challoner," said Hermia.
"I shall be telling Miss Challoner what I think of New York society—and of the people who compose it. That would be unfortunate."
"Well, rather," said Olga wearily. "Don't, I beg. Life's too short. Must you break our pretty faded butterfly on the wheel?"
He shrugged his shoulders and turned aside.
"Not if it jars upon your sensibilities. I have no quarrel with your society. One only quarrels with an enemy or with a friend. To me society is neither." He smiled at Hermia amusedly. "Society may have its opinion of my utility and may express it freely—unchallenged."
"I don't challenge your utility," replied Hermia tartly. "I merely question your point of view. You do not seecouleur de rose, Mr. Markham?"
"No. Life is not that color."
"Oh, la la!" from Olga. "Life is any color one wishes, and sometimes the color one does not wish. Very pale at times, gray, yellow and at times red—oh, so red! The soul is the chameleon which absorbs and reflects it. Today," she signed, "my chameleon has taken a vacation." She rose abruptly and threw out her arms with a dramatic gesture.
"Oh, you two infants—with your wise talk of life—you have already depressed me to the point of dissolution. I've no patience withyou—with either ofyou. You've spoiled mymorning, and I'll not stayhere another minute." She reached for
her trinkets on the table and rattled them viciously. "It's too bad. With the best intentions in the world I bring two of my friends together and they fall instantly into verbal fisticuffs. Hermia, you deserve no better fate than to be locked in here with this bear of a man until you both learn civility."
But Hermia had already preceded the Countess to the door, whither Markham followed them.
"I should be charmed," said Markham.
"To learn civility?" asked Hermia acidly.
"I might even learn that—"
"It is inconceivable," put in the Countess. "You know, Markham, I don't mind your being bearish with me. In fact, I've taken it as the greatest of compliments. I thought that humor of yours was my special prerogative of friendship. But now alas! When I see how uncivil you can be to others I have a sense of lost caste. And you—instead of being amusingly whimsical andentÂt—are in danger of becoming merelybourgeois. I warn you now that if you plan to be uncivil to everybody—I shall give you up."
Markham and Hermia laughed. They couldn't help it. She was too absurd.
"Oh, I hope you won't do that," pleaded Markham.
"I'm capable of unheard of cruelties to those who incur my displeasure. I may even bring Miss Challoner in to call again."
Markham, protesting, followed them to the door.
"Au revoir, Monsieur," said the Countess.
Markham bowed in the general direction of the shadow in the hallway into which Miss Challoner had vanished and then turned back and took up his palette and brushes.
CHAPTER III
THEINEFFECTUAL AUNT
The two women had hardly reached the limousine before the vials of Hermia's wrath were opened.
"What a dreadful person! Olga, how could you have stood him all the while he painted you?"
"We made out very nicely, thank you."
"Hilda was right. Heisa gorilla. Do you know he never even offered me a chair?"
"I suppose he thought you'd have sense enough to sit down if you wanted to."
"O Olga, don't quibble. He's impossible."
The Countess shrugged.
"It's a matter of taste."
"Taste! One doesn't want to be affronted. Is he like this to every one?"
"No. That's just the point. He isn't. I think, Hermia, dear," and she laughed, "that he didn't likeyou."
"Me! Why not?"
"He doesn't like Bath-buns. He once told me so. Besides, I don't think he's altogether in sympathy with the things you typify."
"How does he know what I typify—when I don't know myself? I don't typify anything."
"Oh, yes, you do, to a man like Markham. From the eyrie where his soul is wont to sit, John Markham has a fine perspective on life—yours and mine. But I imagine that you make the more conspicuous silhouette. To him you represent 'the New York Idea'—only more so. Besides that you're a vellum edition of the Feminist Movement with suffrage expurgated. In other words, darling, to a lonely and somewhat morbid philosopher like Markham you're a horrible example of what may become of a female person of liberal views who has had the world suddenly laid in her lap; the spoiled child launched into the full possession of a fabulous fortune with no ambition more serious than to become the 'champeen lady-aviator of Madison Avenue—'"
"Olga! You're horrid," broke in Hermia.
"I know it. It's the reaction from a morning which began too cheerfully. I think I'll leave you now, if you'll drop me at the Blouse Shop—"
"But I thought we were going—"
"No. Not this morning. The mood has passed."
"Oh, very well," said Hermia.
The two pecked each other just below the eye after the manner of women and the Countess departed, while Hermia quizzically watched her graceful back until it had disappeared in the shadows of the store. The current that usually flowed between them was absent now, so Hermia let her go; for Olga Tcherny, when in this mood, wore an armor which Hermia, clever as she thought herself, had never been able to penetrate.
Hermia continued on her way uptown, aware that the change in the Countess Olga was due to intangible influences which she could not define but which she was sure had something to do with the odious person whose studio she had visited. Could it be that Olga really cared for this queer Markham of the goggled eyes, this absent-minded, self-centered creature, who rumpled his hair, smoked a pipe and growled his cheap philosophy? A pose, of course, aimed this morning at Hermia. He flattered her. She felt obliged for the line of demarcation he had so carefully drawn between his life and hers. As if she needed the challenge of his impudence to become aware of it! And yet I her heart she found herself denying that his impudence had irritated her less than his indifference. To tell the truth, Hermia did not like being ignored. It was the first time in fact, that any man had ignored her, and she did not enjoy the sensation. She shrugged her shoulders carelessly and glanced out of the window of her car—and to be ignored by such a personas this grubby painter —it was maddening! She thought of him as "grubby," whatever that meant, because she did not like him, but it was even more maddening for her to think of Olga Tcherny's portrait, which, in spite of her flippant remarks, she had been forced to admit revealed a knowledge of feminine psychology that had excited her amazement and admiration.
One deduction led to another. She found herself wondering what kind of a portrait this Markham would make of her, whether he would see, as he had seen in Olga—the things that lay below the surface—the dreams that came, the aspirations, half-formed, toward something different, the moments of revulsion at the emptiness of her life, which, in spite of the material benefits it possessed, was, after all, only material. Would he paint those—the shadows as well as the lights? Or would he see her as Marsac, the Frenchman, had seen her, the pretty, irresponsible child of fortune who lived only for others who were as gay as herself with no more serious purpose in life than to become, as Olga had said, "the champeen lady-aviator of Madison Avenue."
Hermia lunched alone—out of humor with all the world—and went upstairs with a volume of plays which had just come from the stationer. But she had hardly settled herself comfortably when Titine announced Mrs. Westfield.
It was the ineffectual Aunt.
"Oh, yes," with an air of resignation, "tell Mrs. Westfield to come up."
She pulled the hair over her temples to conceal the scars of her morning's accident and met Mrs. Westfield at the landing outside.
"DearAunt Harriet. So glad," she said, grimacing cheerfully to salve her conscience. "WhathaveI been doing now?"
"Whathaven'tyou been doing, child?"
The good lady sank into a chair, the severe lines in her face more than usually acidulous, but Hermia only smiled sweetly, for Mrs. Westfield's forbidding aspect, as she well knew, concealed the most indulgent of dispositions.
"Playing polo with men, racing in your motor and getting yourself talked about in the papers! Really, Hermia, what will you be doing next?"
"Flying," said Hermia.
Mrs. Westfield hesitated between a gasp and a smile.
"I don't doubt it. You are quite capable of anything—only your wings will not be sent from Heaven—"
"No—from Paris. I'm going to have a Bleriot."
"Do you actually mean that you're going to—O Hermia! Notfly—!" The girl nodded.
"I—I'm afraid I am, Auntie. It's the sporting thing. You know I never couldbearhaving Reggie Armistead do anything I couldn't. Every one will be doing it soon."
"I can't believe that you're in earnest."
"I am, awfully."
"But the danger! You must realize that!"
"I do—that's what attracts me." She got up and put her arms around Mrs. Westfield's neck. "O Auntie, dear, don't bother. I'm absolutely impossible anyway. I can't be happy doing the things that other girls do, and you might as well let me have my own way—"
"But flying—"
"It's as simple as child's play. If you'd ever done it you'd wonder how people would ever be content to motor or ride—"
"You've been up—?"
"Last week at Garden City. I'm crazy about it."
"Yes, child, crazy—mad. I've done what I could to keep your amusements within the bounds of reason and without avail, but I wouldn't be doing my duty to your sainted mother if I didn't try to save you from yourself. I shall do something to prevent this—this madcap venture—I don't know what. I shall see Mr. Winthrop at the Trust Company. There must be some way—"
The pendants in the good lady's ears trembled in the light, and her hand groped for her handkerchief. "Youcan't, Hermia. I'll not permit it. I'll get out an injunction—or something. It was all very well when you were a child—but now—do you realize that you're a woman, a grown woman, with responsibilities to the community? It's time that you were married, settled down and took your proper place in New York. I had hoped that you would have matured and forgotten the childish pastimes of your girlhood but now—now—"
Mrs. Westfield, having found her handkerchief, wept into it, her emotions too deep for other expression, while Hermia, now really moved, sank at her feet upon the floor, her arms about her Aunt's shoulders, and tried to comfort her. "I'm not the slightest use in the world, Auntie, dear. I haven't a single homely virtue to recommend me. I'm only fit to ride and dance and motor and frivol. And whom should I marry? Surely not Reggie Armistead or Crosby Downs! Reggie and I have always fought like cats across a wire, and as for Crosby—I would as life marry the great Cham of Tartary. No, dear, I'm not ready for marriage yet. I simply couldn't. There, there, don't cry. You've done your duty. I'm not worth bothering about. I'm not going to do anything dreadful. And besides—you know if anythingdidhappen to me, the money would go to Millicent and Theodore."
"I—I don't want anything to happen to you," said Mrs. Westfield, weeping anew.
"Nothing will—you know I'm not hankering to die—but I don't mind taking a sporting chance with a game like that."
"But what good can it possibly do?"
Hermia Challoner laughed a little bitterly. "My dear Auntie, my life has not been planned with reference to the ultimate possible good. I'm a renegade if you like, a hoyden with a shrewd sense of personal morality but with no other sense whatever. I was born under a mad moon with some wild humor in my blood from an earlier incarnation and I can't—I simplycan'tbe conventional. I've tried doing as other—and nicer—girls do but it wearies me to the point of distraction. Their lives are so pale, so empty, so full of pretensions. They have always seemed so. When I used to romp like a boy my elders told me it was an unnatural way for little girls to play. But I kept on romping. If it hadn't been natural I shouldn't have romped. Perhaps Sybil Trenchard is natural—or Caroline Anstell. They're conventional girls—automatic parts of the social machinery, eating, sleeping, decking themselves for the daily round, mere things of sex, their whole life planned so that they may make a desirable marriage. Good Lord, Auntie! And whom will they marry? Fellows like Archie Westcott or Carol Gouverneur, fellows with notorious habits which marriage is not likely to mend. How could it? No one expects it to. The girls who marry men like that get what they bargain for—looks for money—money for looks—"
"But Trevelyan Morehouse!"
Hermia paused and examined the roses in the silver vase with a quizzical air.
"If I were not so rich, I should probably love Trevvy madly. But, you see, then Trevvy wouldn't love me. He couldn't afford to. He's ruining himself with roses as it is. And, curiously enough, I have a notion when I marry, to love—and be loved for myself alone. I'm not in love with Trevvy or any one else—or likely to be. The man I marry, Auntie, isn't doing what Trevvy and Crosby and Reggie Armistead are doing. He's different somehow—different from any man I've ever met."
"How, child?"
"I don't know," she mused, with a smile. "Only he isn't like Trevvy Morehouse."
"But Mr. Morehouse is a very promising young man—"
"The person I marry won't be a promising young man. Promising young men continually remind me of my own deficiencies. Imagine domesticating a critic like that, marrying a mirror for one's foibles and being able to see nothing
else. No, thanks."
"Whom will you marry then?" sighed Mrs. Westfield resignedly.
Hermia Challoner caught her by the arm. "Oh, I don't know—only he isn't the kind of man who'd send me roses. I think he's something between a pilgrim and a vagabond, a knight-errant from somewhere between Heaven and the true Bohemia, a despiser of shams and vanities, a man so much bigger than I am that he can make me what he is—in spite of himself."
"Hermia! A Bohemian! Such a person will hardly be found—"
"O Auntie, you don't understand. I'm not likely to find him. I'm not even looking for him, you know, and just now I don't want to marry anybody."
"I only hope when you do, Hermia, that you will commit no imprudence," said Mrs. Westfield severely.
Hermia turned quickly.
"Auntie, Captain Lundt of theKaiser Wilhelmused to tell me that there were two ways of going into a fog," she said. "One was to go slow and use the siren. The other was to crowd on steam and go like h—." "Hermia!" "I'm sorry, Auntie, but that describes the situation exactly. I'm too wealthy to risk marrying prudently. I'd have to find a man who was a prudent as I was, which means that he'd be marrying me for my money—"
"That doesn't follow. You're pretty, attractive—"
"Oh, thanks. I know what I am. I'm an animated dollar mark, a financial abnormity, with just about as much chance of being loved for myself alone as a fox in November. When men used to propose to me I halted them, pressed their hands, bade them be happy and wept a tear or two for the thing that could not be. Now I fix them with a cold appraising eye and let them stammer through to the end. I've learned something. The possession of money may have its disadvantages, but it sharpens one's wits amazingly."
"I'm afraid it sharpens them too much, my dear," said Mrs. Westfield coldly. She looked around the room helplessly as if seeking in some mute object tangible evidence of her niece's sanity.
"Oh, well," she finished. "I shall hope and pray for a miracle to bring you to your senses." And then, "What have you planned for the spring?"
"I'm going to 'Wake-Robin; first. By next week my aerodrome will be finished. My machine is promised by the end of May. They're sending a perfectly reliable mechanician—"
"Reliable—in the air! Imagine it!"
"—and I'll be flying in a month."
The good lady rose and Hermia watched her with an expression in which relief and guilt were strangely mingled. Her conscience always smote her after one of her declarations of independence to her Aunt, whose mildness and ineptitude in the unequal struggle always left the girl with an unpleasant sense of having taken a mean advantage of a helpless adversary. To Hermia Mrs. Westfield's greatest effectiveness was when she was most ineffectual.
"There's nothing more for me to say, I suppose," said Mrs. Westfield.
"Nothing except that you approve," pleaded her niece wistfully.
"I'll never do that," icily. "I don't approve of you at all. Why should I mince matters? You're gradually alienating me, Hermia —cutting yourself off from the few blood relations you have on earth."
"From Millicent and Theodore? I thought that Milly fairly doted on me—"
Mrs. Westfield stammered helplessly.
"It's I—I who object. I don't like your friends. I don't think I would be doing my duty to their sainted father if—"
"Oh, I see," said Hermia thoughtfully. "You think I may pervert—contaminate them—"
"Not you—your friends—"
"I was hoping that you would all come to 'Wake-Robin' for June."
"I—I've made other plans," said Mrs. Westfield.
